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March 17, 2005

The varnish vanishes

Each time I rise from this chair I'm sitting on, there's a sound like velcro and a certain effort is required. Plus I believe the butt-end of my shorts bear a certain gleam. Not that I'm crowing about this, though my wife has been rolling around on the floor.

Here's what happened.

A friend walked in this afternoon with a bubble-wrapped gift for my son. A folding chair, his size. When he, in his excitement, began pulling off the bubble-wrap to look at it, he found the wrap sticking to the chair. I helped him separate them, and we found that the varnish applied to the chair had not dried yet. So we have this handsome chair embellished with little round impressions from hundreds of plastic bubbles.

It felt sticky to the touch, so we dissuaded my son from sitting in it. We told him he probably didn't want to walk around with a chair plastered to his behind. He smiled in mysterious delight, as he tends to do.

Several hours later, it's dinner time. My son has left the chair at the dining table and gone to bed. I get my food and sit in it. (The chair, not the food). (OK, my wife gets me my food). My wife tells me I look ludicrous because my head is at table level and I'm shovelling the aloo-matar directly into my maw. But I pay no attention, I carry on shovelling.

When I'm done, my goal is to rise, as I usually do after eating. Only, my shorts are stuck to the chair and thus, so am I. Naturally, I squawk for help from my wife. Seeing me, she begins to laugh. I do manage to rise. The chair is plastered to my butt, and its weight threatens to pull my shorts off. Not something I'm anxious to have happen.

So with one hand holding my shorts up, I yank at the back of my shorts with the other. My wife does too. Velcro sounds like you wouldn't believe, but so much of the fabric is stuck, and so hard, that this is tough work, takes long, and I'm beginning to worry that the shorts will tear. My wife, she is laughing so hard I'm afraid she'll wake the neighbours.

She suggests, I'll stand here holding the chair, you walk forward and away from me and the chair. Good idea. Only, when I begin walking, she gets pulled along too. She suggests, I'll walk backward while you walk forward. (To do this, of course, she will first have to pick herself off the floor where she lies, laughing). Good idea. Only, when she begins walking backward, I get pulled that way. She's rather strong, my wife, even when she laughs.

I am eventually separated from the infernal chair. But it has lost its varnish to my shorts, which means my behind now gleams like the full moon. And the damn varnish is still not dry, so whenever I sit elsewhere, like on this chair, I'm stuck again. And my wife, she rolls on the floor still.

Unknown to her, I've varnished the floor. Wait till she tries to rise.